


Crooked Blades

by Gotcocomilk



Category: Bleach
Genre: Banter, Enemies to Lovers, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Protectiveness, Soul Bond, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel, basically gen but with tension, but this is just the enemies part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gotcocomilk/pseuds/Gotcocomilk
Summary: Kisuke hadn’t expected this when he woke up this morning. Well, that wasn’t surprising, not really. It was hard to expect a sword to the gut from a colleague, even after all his years in the Onmitsukidō. Despite expectations, betrayal among spies was limited— most traitors died before they could draw blades.Aizen Sōsuke was clearly not most traitors.
Relationships: Aizen Sousuke/Hirako Shinji/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 7
Kudos: 103





	Crooked Blades

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Bleach Polyship Rarepair event over on my server. Warning that I tried to cram SO MANY TROPES INTO THIS RIP ALL OF US! WILL IT MAKE ANY SENSE? WHO REALLY KNOWS, NOT ME!

Kisuke hadn’t expected this when he woke up this morning. Well, that wasn’t surprising, not really. It was hard to expect a sword to the gut from a colleague, even after all his years in the Onmitsukidō. Despite expectations, betrayal among spies was limited— most traitors died before they could draw blades.

Aizen Sōsuke was clearly not most traitors.

So Kisuke hadn’t expected the blade, and had barely seem it coming. He hadn’t expected a captain to step before him and block the blow, and he especially hadn’t expected to have a hand held across his chest like he was precious.

He thought this was a strange day indeed.

“Kisuke, I’m beginning to think this might all be yer fault,” the man in front of him said, a swirl of white captain’s robes glinting in the darkness.

The hand pushing him back flexed across his skin, and Kisuke wondered at how fast it had moved him. He smiled, sheepish and a shade too bright.

He was so curious he thought he might burn up.

“That’s quite an accusation, Hirako-taichō, when you haven’t even told me what you are accusing me of.”

Kisuke, fresh out of bankai training and quick as an assassin should be, almost hadn’t felt the captain coming. He had hardly felt the lieutenant coming either, but his feet had taken him out of range quickly enough to dodge the sword.

The hand hauling him to safety was really quite unnecessary, but it was terribly interesting.

Aizen smiled behind delicate glasses, and the expression was carefully kind. Now that Kisuke had felt the wind of a blade come towards him, he was less inclined to believe it. “Do excuse Hirako. I imagine it’s quite frustrating, to not be able to kill me permanently.”

“Don’t worry yer pretty little head, Sōsuke. I’m still gonna have plenty of fun guttin’ ya,” the captain said, with a smile that Kisuke could see cut into the air.

There was an edge of danger lingering around them, sharp in a way Aizen had never been before in Kisuke’s memory. Hirako was too fierce too, but he’d been deadly as a weapon for as long as Kisuke had been aware of him.

Neither was moving.

Kisuke shifted behind the man’s body, watched it shift with him. The captain was moving protectively, on an instinct deeper than muscle memory.

How interesting indeed.

“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve clearly done this before,” he said, glancing between them and watching their eyes flick towards him. He didn’t say what they’d done, because he didn’t need to— the opening would tell him, even when his guesses couldn’t.

Still, neither one moved.

“Urahara-san. As clever as always,” Aizen said, with a nod and a gentle flick of his sword. Kisuke wasn’t sure when it had shifted away from the ground, but it stretched out towards them now.

It glinted as brightly as Hirako’s coat did in the afternoon sun. It was a wonder people weren’t streaming towards them to stop the fight, with how brilliant that sword was.

Even more interesting. 

There was a shifting motion before Kisuke, a click of tongue and a hand that pressed a little too hard against his chest. Hirako moved further forward, but his eyes glanced back long enough to burn at Kisuke.

“Ya couldn’t have just stayed quiet and not let this asshole find you, eh Kisuke?”

Aizen laughed, and the sound was a shade too dark to be polite.

“Now, that’s a little harsh for poor Urahara-san, Hirako-taichō. Why don’t you step back. We both know what resets this, at this point. He’s the only one we haven’t tried, and it’s in both our interests to reset the loop.”

“I don't think ya have the right to call me that, traitor,” Hirako said, words venomous as a snake about to strike. Kisuke was glad, with the brilliant clarity of a scientist, that the sting wasn’t directed at him.

He could have fought it, but he’d hate to do that without the anti-venom of preparation. It would be worse still when he didn’t know what was happening.

Aizen’s answering smile was delighted, and as calm as Hirako had been annoyed. “Ah, my apologies, I meant no offense. Should I be calling you Shinji then? You used to like that a great deal.”

The wave of reiatsu nearly knocked Kisuke to his feet, for all his strength. Hirako was among the strongest captains, and one of the oldest.

Now he felt like one of the angriest.

This was even more interesting. Kisuke tucked away that knowledge, and didn’t need to wonder why Hirako’s hand had gone white and furious across him.

Maybe he should have, because he didn’t see the blade pierce through Aizen’s chest before it was driven bone deep. He didn’t see it, but he heard the laughter afterwards. He felt it cut through him too, even thought he hadn’t stepped close enough to be gutted. He was caught in the swirl of mist and mirrors, in the calm ripples of a vast lake. Illusion, he registered vaguely, was not something he had planned for, but it explained why no one had come to find them.

Hirako-taichō’s face looked strangely broken, as all three of them fell to the floor.

How very curious, Kisuke thought, and then had no more thoughts at all.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

“Well, it looks like I was right. You _had_ done this before,” he said, standing in a quiet corner of the Seireitei. Aizen and Hirako stood a few feet away, with a smile and a glare. Both seemed too sharp, and both were entirely unharmed. They had sought him out as soon as he’d woken up, and this time their hands had been easy enough to dodge.

This time he was expecting them, just as he was expecting them to sheath their blades.

“Curious. He’s looping too, now. How curious indeed.”

Kisuke raised his hands away from the hilt of his sword, and smiled. He’d still be fast enough to reach Benihime if he needed to, but he wouldn’t— better to fall again and get a better understanding of this anyway.

He turned to Aizen, standing a few feet away. The man was hard to see when Hirako stood before him like a lazy predator. Even here, with one death staining them all, and their lives clearly linked, Hirako-taichō was protecting him.

Pieces began to slot themselves into place in his mind, and the image it shaped was curious indeed. “Time travel is a rather curious thing indeed, lieutenant. I’m curious how you managed it!”

Hirako shifted, white robes shifting with him. They looked strange on his back, like they shouldn’t have been there at all, like Kisuke hadn’t seen them there in a long time.

Even more curious.

“Ya finally remember?” There was something darker in the man’s voice, and for all that he stood in front of Kisuke, his attention wasn’t on Aizen.

Long hair seemed to shift in the sunlight with each breath, and Kisuke remembered running his hands through it. He thought it might have been shorter.

“Ah, sorry Captain. I only remember the most recent loop.”

“Damn,” the man said, and Aizen shifted before them.

“That’s a bit crude, but yes, I agree. It’s an unfortunate situation”

Kisuke wondered how many times they’d killed each other, to make those words sound tired under the veneer of politeness. He wondered when he’d thought it was a veneer at all.

Somehow, he could tell this would be something he couldn’t escape from, but well. Kisuke wasn’t sure he needed to.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Shinji hadn’t meant to time travel at all, not really. He did most things on purpose, with the precision of a master swordsman and a lazy man. The world was his to pick apart, and he knew people better than almost anyone else.

He was a careful man, but this one time he was taken entirely by surprise. Trust Kisuke and Sōsuke to be the ones to do it, he thought, and barred his teeth in something like a grin.

He didn’t imagine it looked too friendly.

He hadn’t meant to get tied to the bastard Sōsuke’s sword either, and loop every time it cut them. He hadn’t meant to do anything but kill him, and cut out the last of that old feeling.

“I’m afraid you can’t kill me now, Hirako,” Sōsuke said, like he’d read Shinji’s mind, like the man still understood him.

Shinji grinned, teeth bare and blood boiling. “Watch me, kid.”

The man smirked wider, edging from polite and kind into the start of smug. Even behind glasses Shinji could see bright eyes glint, sparking in the afternoon light. It had been a long time since he’d stood so close to Sōsuke.

He hadn’t missed it.

“Oh I am, of course,” Sōsuke said, and Shinji resisted the urge to gut him again. “But you misunderstand me.”

A hand raised up, and with it the edge of Sōsuke’s zanpakutō glittered. Shinji resisted the urge to break that sword into pieces, to raise his own blade in response.

He couldn’t even know if that was the real thing, but Shinji didn’t care. He’d let it cut his skin if he could know it was Sōsuke’s.

He had long cut out the part that wished he didn’t have to.

“Surely you know what this is?”

“Don’t play with me, Sōsuke. That’s yer sword.” Shinji’s response was slow and drawled, and he let it laze into the air.

He wanted to gut Sōsuke.

“Actually, captain, I believe that is _our_ sword.” Kisuke’s voice still sounded far too gentle, but under the polite tone Shinji could see hints of steel. Had the man remembered yet, he wondered, and how different was the man who didn’t remember?

More importantly, what the hell did that mean?

“As expected of Urahara Kisuke,” Sōsuke said, with a smile that was too bright. “You both could use this sword like your own I think, though not as well as I could, of course.”

Shinji didn’t need more than a heart beat to realize what the man meant. He pulled out his sword, and released the Shikai fast as lightning. The world shifted and swirled upside down, but Kisuke and Sōsuke didn’t shift with it or stumble. The sword in his hand hummed a quiet tune, and recognized three masters.

The zanpakutō had merged.

All their blades were hooked together, like the crook of Shinji’s Shikai. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he wanted to rip them apart. He didn’t wonder what this meant for the future. He didn’t care, not when this felt like a leash around his neck.

“We should really be sure the loop happens every time one of us is cut,” Kisuke said from beside him, voice light and curious.

Shinji agreed. Shinji agreed so much he pulled out his sword and cut a line across Sōsuke’s shoulder, enough to draw blood but not enough to kill. The man let it happen, but Shinji still felt better. He felt worse when they woke up in the compound again, reset in time and space.

“So it happens every time,” Kisuke said, and there was something deeper in his voice now. It sounded more familiar, and the smile was a bit wider. If the man was remembering and didn’t tell him, Shinji was going to kick his ass. “I think I have a theory.”

“Care to share with the class, Kisuke?” Shinji asked, leaning back against the wall behind him. There was no point in protecting Kisuke from Sōsuke now, not when any wound would send them all back.

Sōsuke seemed to know that too, because he wasn’t moving any closer. He was still too damn close.

“We are bound together and trapped in the moments that caused our own deaths, I think. You’ve both mentioned remembering things from a future that I don’t know, so its likely this will snap back into place if we fix that event.”

Shinji narrowed his eyes, watched Kisuke’s hands move with familiar flicks through the air.

The man was remembering.

“Ya know more than that, don’t ya?”

“Ah, really I don’t know anything more!” Kisuke scratched the back of his head, a motion Shinji hadn’t seen in a long time. He looked so young like that, bare of that damn hat and without the smirk and shadows that came with it.

Shinji should really get him a fan soon. But that was for the future, when they’d figured out a way to break this all apart and Shinji could take a step without thinking of the traitor. He turned to look at Sōsuke, and for once he wasn’t grinning. The man was looking back, with sharp eyes and a quiet smile.

He looked as lethal as Shinji remembered him to be. He really, really, hated that.

“Well, Shinji? Shall we plan how to stop this?”

“Might as fuckin’ well,” he answered, and stepped into the depths of the Seireitei. He didn’t even consider drawing his blade, but he wouldn’t realize that for a while.

He wouldn’t realize just how much he’d gained for longer still.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Kisuke looked down at his measurements and smiled. It was a quiet thing, but far too smug for the young man he should be.

He really needed to buy a hat, but maybe that would wait until the next time they inevitably looped back. He thought he might need more memories before he really understood who he’d become.

He understood enough to know what he’d done though.

Soul mates, huh? It was an interesting occurrence, but the other two didn’t need to know. They didn’t even need to know how deep the bonds went, as long as they spent enough time together to fix it.

It really was an effective way of leashing Aizen, but he hadn’t realized that it would snap up Shinji too. He had realized it would cost him, and it had— but that was fine. Kisuke looked up at the two backs walking in front of him, and the future that wasn’t broken and shattered yet, at the future Aizen wouldn’t be allowed to change.

Memory was a small price to pay for the chance to fix his own mistakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on [my server](https://discord.gg/7tn2ywb) for prompts and general tomfoolery, and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/gotcocomilk) or [tumblr](https://thehoardofthegreatdragon.tumblr.com) for stupidity. 
> 
> I love hear if I wrote a particularly captivating or interesting line-- feel free to include it in a comment to feed your friendly neighborhood writing monster.


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